David Thomson on the Magic of Acting

Welcome

back to the Bulwark Coast to Hollywood. This week, I’m really pleased to be rejoined by David Thompson, longtime film critic author of the new biographical dictionary of film, and a host of other books, including most recently, acting naturally the magic in great performances, which is out now at bookstores everywhere. Check it out, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you buy book. And I I strongly recommended that I had a great deal of fun reading this. Welcome back to the show, mister Thompson.

Thank you very much. Alright. Before we talk about your book, I wanna start with a slightly more general question. And one that, you know, is is a little selfish with me to ask because what I’d like to know is when when you’re sitting down to write about a performance or a performer, what it is you’re trying to express to the reader or or to yourself? And I ask I ask kind of curiosity again kind of selfishly because I been writing about film for a fairly long time, not as long as you, but a fairly long time.

And I’m still terrible at writing about acting. I I still have trouble with trying to trying to grasp that magic of it, the alchemy of it. When you so when you were sitting down to write, what are you looking

for? Well, I think in all of writing I do about film, I’m basically trying to convey what it feels like to be watching it. The screen, but in this case, players, actors on the screen. And I think I’m trying to do what I might do if I came home after meeting someone And my wife said, well, what’s he like? And I would sort of begin to describe his appearance, his manner, whether I sort of trusted him, whether I like to whether I felt good with him, whether he felt good with me.

I I think you’re getting into a curious relationship which exists between actors who don’t know I exist and me who sort of wants to have a fantasy involvement with these people on the screen. But it’s really founded in a precise reaction to appearance. For instance, I’m looking at you at the moment and don’t let me. I mean, don’t be put up by me dragging you in. No.

That’s fine. You obviously do this a lot for a living. And you have a composed set mask of a face, which is exactly what I would try to have if I was doing what you’re doing. But as I talked to you, I’m maybe getting through some of the professional defenses. Maybe I’m getting closer into you.

And it it’s it’s that kind of process. You know, when you sort of are looking at a movie and when you say, well, I like the way Garikoopa looks or I like the way Barbara’s stand with looks. It it it it’s a matter of saying why are you saying that? What is it about their looks that you like? Why do you think they have lost it?

For as long as they did so that millions of strangers felt it was worth watching them and found something of their hopes in those people on the screen. So, I mean, that’s a complicated answer, but and I’ve been doing it a long time, so I sort of do it instinctively —

Mhmm. —

immediately now. But it’s very like what would happen if you and I met in a room? You know, we we we try to we try to make an emotional contact with someone. And that depends on a lot of very rapid judgments about what your appearance means. What does it mean when your fingers go up?

No. Don’t take them away. What does it mean when your fingers go up? Do you have anything like that? Do you do that all the time?

You probably do because most of us do what we do physically all the time. And maybe your father did it. I don’t know. Sometimes there are links like that. But,

I

mean, this is very complicated, obviously. But I to make it direct. But you asked this tremendous question. How does one describe acting? I would say what I’ve just said to you is is my methodology, but the the practice is doing it day after day for sixty years.

Yeah. Which is — Yeah. — what I’ve been doing. Yeah. And

and very successfully, I mean, I I again, you you have practically a whole library. You could learn you could learn a whole film course just from reading your your bibliography, which I I recommend folks do. You know, one of the things in I’m I’m a film critic. I I write about film mostly some TV, but through screens. And one of the things that jumps out at me while reading your book is that you you you attend and write about the stage as well, a a a fairly large amount.

And, you know, well, there’s there’s an interesting part in one of your in I I wanna say it’s it’s towards the end, but the here’s a a line from your book. In the nearly two centuries that we’ve had photography, our discourse with faces has altered dramatically, or let’s just say it has made the face the focus of a story. And that kind of got me thinking about the difference between film, you know, with its with its use of close ups with its real tight focus on on faces. And the stage, which I feel like is more of a where the voice, I think, is is slightly more prominent. Where where body language is a little more prominent.

How how does that Does it do you are you looking for different things when you’re looking at a stage performance versus a film or or screen performance?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think when you’re in the theater, you’re really looking at the play. You’re looking at something that has been written and constructed and worked over in rehearsal. And even if you’ve got the best seat in the theater, it’s actually quite hard to see the faces of the actors in the way that you’re absolutely accustomed to doing in the movies.

And It’s a matter of fact that a a number of great stage actors were not very good on film, whereas there have been a lot of great film actors who really never been on stage because they were afraid of it, because they They knew instinctively. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t remember the lines or whatever. Movies are about presence. More than acting in a certain way.

They’re about the way a person looks about how they stand, how they move, how they look at other people, and a lot of that comes down to the face. You know, the movies are a medium in which we are looking all the time. So it’s perfectly natural that the most successful people in movies are very good at looking at other people. Carrie Graham, for instance, looked at other people, with an extraordinary foreign skepticism. It was in it was a deep expression of his of his soul, I would say.

And I think you can measure a lot of great movie actors in terms of how they look at people. Betti Davis looked at people. Even people she was allegedly in love with in the story, looked at them with a certain kind of contempt. The she had a superiority that it was a little aggressive, but audiences loved it. Mhmm.

And she was not the most beautiful woman ever on film, but she sort of said, I really don’t care. I know, I’m beautiful, and you’re looking at me, and we did for a long time. So the way people in movies look at other people in movies. It’s very, very important, I think. And you can get a great performance in a movie where a person of how this is a word.

Whereas on stage, that would be nearly impossible.

Yeah. Yes. That makes that makes a lot of sense. You know, you you mentioned the look of people, the look of someone, and, you know, one of the one of the trickier aspects of writing about acting is how inextricably it really is tied to appearance. Right?

I mean, acting is one of the few jobs where we’re, like, explicitly asked to people to to judge people by how they look. And

it’s become a much greater problem in recent years. Because for instance, it is sometimes taken to be offensive to talk about someone’s appearance in that precise and pointed away. And yet, why are people in movies if it’s not because of their appearance, you know. And we are very used. We had a hundred years of people in movies being not just good looking, but beautiful.

Mhmm. Now in a way that people in real life don’t hope to be, and I think that we’re coming to grips with the whole issue that people in movies have been too beautiful in a certain way. And that ordinary people have to live without that and movies ought to be able to deal with that. So sometimes, I might find myself describing an actress. And I’m eighty two remember, but describing an actress in ways that are today a little offensive —

Mhmm. —

and so I have to guard against it and I do my best. But nonetheless, I was born and raised, and I’m still of a mind and spirit that looks as an actress, certainly an actress of a certain age. And someone says, is she desirable or not? And however inappropriate that may seem to be nowadays, I don’t think anyone can deny that the movies as a business have always been based upon that. Do you desire the person you’re looking at?

And it works for men and women and any other variations. We we we go to the movies still to look at people we like. The people we might want to be with We might want to possess, we might want to be in love with, and people we might literally like to be. I mean, people have always gone to the movies because those images on screen expressed that in a desire. I know for me, for instance, I was exactly the right age to see James Dean when he appeared.

And I was English and I was in England, and Dean seemed a very different kind of kid. But in the way he moved and looked and was shy about being looked at, but greedy to be looked at, he expressed so much that I felt about life altogether. And and, you know, depending on what age you were at what time, we all have those people we fell in love with through the movies, and we’ve learned to be realistic about it. But still, they they ring a chord and and they they are very precious. So I’m not sure what age you are, but there will be someone in your life who fills that kind of role.

There is for ages. Sure. Sure.

I mean, I I can I I won’t I won’t bore people with my various crushes growing up by the room? It’s our Oh, it didn’t work. You know, it’s but this this question comes up and you and you raise it in the book. You know, the the the whole kerfuffle around promising young woman and Dennis Harvey, a variety’s description of Carrie Mulligan. I mean, I, you know, I remember I watched his play out in real time and thought, well, he did.

He did nothing wrong. But I I come from kind of an old fashioned perspective on this. Like, I mean, I what was your as somebody, again, who’s been doing this for a very long time. I how did you respond to that that situation?

Well, I know Dennis a little bit because he lives in the Bay Area. I thought I thought what he said was to the point and reasonable. I understand how Carrie Mulligan responded to it, but I think it’s impossible for an actress like Carrie Mulligan or like any others to say that I am simply playing a part and that I am not lending my look, my face, my body the way I move all those things to the part. And, you know, it was a big reach for Carrie Mulligan, I think. But I thought she pulled it off wonderfully.

And and still I thought that Dennis Harvey’s observation was a a reasonable one. I can I didn’t feel it was offensive, but I’m not sure that she was offended, but I think she was philosophically troubled with her appearance? Was being cold into play. When she went very hard in that film to change her appearance, totally legitimate, But, you know, she she didn’t look like the way Carrie Mulligan looked two hours before she came to the set. She worked on herself carefully for that, which is everything we expect a player to do.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Yeah. I mean, I again, my my main takeaway from that was I I couldn’t believe Variety’s response more than anything else. I mean, I I understand. Look, I I have always had I’ve always been of the opinion that the critic gets his say, if the actor or director or writer wants to respond, I think that’s totally fair. But at a certain point, you know, the publication kinda has to stand by their their man, and they didn’t there.

And it was very it was jarring to me. I

think it was wrong or variety, and it’s part of the fear that is out there at the moment. That we’re gonna say the wrong thing, and we’re gonna be crushed. I mean, you know, careers are being broken on things like this. And and it’s a very, very tricky issue. They’re actors.

I talk about Kevin Spacey in in the book. Now, I think Kevin Spacey is a remarkable actor. I can easily believe that he’s done a lot of bad stuff in life and it’s come out and it’s gotta haunt him for the rest of his career, but he’s still, in my opinion, a very good actor. And I know historically that if you go back, there have always been a lot of bad people in the movies. And once upon a time, the badness attached to people we now revere was covered up because the profession, the business thought they should cover such stuff up.

Hobby Weinstein is a scammer, a rogue, a bad man, but he was a pretty good film producer. And if you’re gonna face facts, you’ve gotta keep those two things in balance. A lot of bad people have been involved drinking films. Yeah. What?

That’s for sure. I mean, I you know, you you mentioned Kevin Spacey and I I had I wrote I wrote down something that you’d written in your book here, isn’t it enough that we adore actors and aspire to their light? Do we really have to approve of them too? And that jumped out of me as like kind of the central critical question of our time almost. And it and it and it really intertwines with something else that you say a little earlier in the book.

When we go to see actors, we have two opposed purposes to step away from ourselves and then to find our reflection in the show. And I I wonder if part of the reason that people are so upset about people like Spacey, the, you know, the the awful stories of abuse perpetrated by actors or producers. I wonder if part of it is we’re afraid of seeing a reflection of ourselves and people we know to be personally monstrous. I I

think it’s true. I mean, you know, for a hundred years, people went to the movies to fantasize. That’s really what it comes to. And they exercised a lot of dark urges. Why was the silence of the lambs?

Such an amazing success. Why did it usher in a whole school of films about serial killers. If not for the fact that the truly horrific aspects of Hannibal Lecter were offset in a really fascinating way by the charm of Anthony Hopkins, who was so amazing in that film. I think what it was doing was saying to us, you used to come to the movies. To dream of happiness, true love, so on being heroic, being brave, so on.

But didn’t you also come to pretend you were something very bad. And you know, the way in which cinema has made cult figures of truly appalling villains is I think fundamental to what’s happened in modern culture. And it it leads you to it leads you to to things like Donald Trump. Who I think is a very bad man, but a man for whom I think his worse qualities are what appeals so much to the people who follow him and believe him and almost love him. And this this is very complicated, but we can’t run away from it because the people on the screen have a truly extraordinary power of ours.

In

your in your book, I believe you compare Donald Trump to Tom Hanks, which is a very funny juxtaposition as anybody who, you know, has spent time watching Donald Trump and Tom Hanks. No. I mean, just the idea of the two of these these people and and how different they appear to us, but we don’t really know. We

don’t we

don’t know what top banks they really like.

We

have a I think we have a better sense of what Donald Trump is like because it It seems to all be there on the surface. But, again, we don’t

know for sure. He’s more of Donald Trump. I mean, Trump acts six maybe two films a year. There was a period where Donald Trump made a movie every day. But, actually, you could pick up get camera on your screen for a couple of hours.

Nearly every day if you remember, you know. And got the energy he had for doing it, you know. I’m he he loved doing it. It fulfilled him. So I agree with you.

We don’t really know, which which one to trust the most.

Yeah.

You

know, it’s funny. One of one of the things that you say, you you wrote about Donald Trump. You mentioned his I think it was his flagrant dishonesty. And why and that and that is what kind of appeals to people. Right?

That he so so heartfelt a liar. And I I I do wonder if that’s actually true. I mean, I I wonder if it is but this I’ll I’ll put it this way. One thing that I hear from Trump supporters is he’s the only one who tells it how it is. He’s the only one who’s telling it how it is.

Right? And I always sit there and think to myself how can you actually believe that, but I think they do. And I can’t tell if it if it’s what you’re saying that it’s it’s such it’s so dishonest that it’s almost honest. Or if it’s, you know, real real truth telling. I just I can’t I cannot fathom it.

I don’t understand

it. Well, he’s he’s consistent. I mean, he stays in character the whole time. And I think he’s a man, a figure who has invented this self. But really, disguises, mosques, any issues about who he really is.

I suspect that he is a man of very little self awareness because all his energy goes into performing himself. And that is not uncommon with actors. I’ve known a lot of actors in different ways over the years, and I think a lot of them have a certain kind of emptiness that is looking for a character to play to fill them up. And I think Trump is like that. And I think Trump found a long time ago this monstrousness that he knew he could do, and it probably stops him having to think, our school, the questions you and I might ask, and other people might ask, about who we are and whether we’re doing a good job of being ourselves.

He he performs himself with such an intensity and constancy that his failings have sort of almost vanished and gone on their side.

Yeah. No. I think that’s a that’s a good way of putting you know, you you at at one point your book, you write about being with Anthony Hopkins and feeling almost studied by him as if he was trying to, you know, pick pick mannerisms out of your your behavior for some future characters. Is that is that part of that

I mean,

I don’t want I don’t wanna call Anthony Hopkins empty, but I like, that the emptiness that you mentioned trying to No.

Sure. I mean, you know, he’s eighty five, I think. And he works all the time. And, you know, you you might think, well, he’s obviously wealthy. He’s obviously established, so he doesn’t really have to prove anything else.

But I think my reading of him What I picked up from him is that if he doesn’t have a job to do a part to play, he’ll get restless and you’ll get irritable. And in a certain way, he gets dangerous. He’s got a he’s got a fierce energy in him. Which he gives to many of his characters. But if he’s left to his own resources with it, I think he might be a very difficult person.

To be with. People said about Mylan Brando in in his great years that you would sit down to him He he would sit down with him. He would talk to him. Now after about half an hour, you realize that he was repeating you He was copying some of your mannerisms. He wasn’t doing it maliciously or even playfully.

It was some kind of facility, an instinct he had. But if he you showed him another person, he would start to copy that person. I think a lot of actors are like that. They they they they they live to pretend they’re someone else. And I see that.

That’s a tendency that is gonna build and build in human social nature more and more. And it’s gonna make life difficult

to treat. Well, how do how do you mean? I mean, do you just mean in terms of, you know, how people interact more through through technology versus in person, I

it was it was it was it. But what I’m really talking about is that Somewhat of my generation was sort of raised and educated to the idea that you would be true to yourself. No one really is. Investigated what that meant, but it was a cliche that was there hanging up with us. I think More and more of the human being is defined not by being true to himself, but by pretending to be other people.

And I think it’s looking at screens so much of the time that has led us into that because we we saw we sort of we see on screens how easily a tiny gesture in ourselves like fingers across the mouth is a way people read us and interpret us. Now you’re getting self conscious super See,

you mentioned that again. I I’m gonna — Right. — I’m gonna put them up here on my head. I well, no. But I I I totally understand this.

I mean, this is my my big theory of yeah. My big theory. But this is a thing I think about with social media all the time. Is that none of us None of us are our true selves on social media. It is a mediated — Sure.

— window into what we want people think about us, which is just, again, another form of acting. And and I mean, think how far in the last,

let’s say, four years. All of our lives, pretty well, all of our lives, have been so rearranged so that meetings, personal meetings have been transformed by what we’re doing now, where we’re looking at each other on the screen. And only a very certain partial part of ourselves. That’s why I can talk about what you’re doing with your hands and your face. And because What have I got to look at about you?

I can’t see your legs. I can’t see your body. I don’t really know what size you are, but I see your face. This is making the face of what we do with it. So much more important, and you almost by consequence have to take responsibility for your face and be in charge of it.

That’s happening to all of us.

Well, there

in

in your book, you talk about the evolution of the face and the idea that we, you know, are that we tell more of our stories through our faces now. I wonder I I mean, I I do wonder how much of that is is really new. I mean, you get at this a little bit in in your book, but I do wonder I mean, I feel like we’ve always judged people by their face. Right? Isn’t that, you know, the first way we we get to even even our old ancient ancestors?

Obviously, you’re correct, to a degree. Here’s the change. From about eighteen thirty seven onwards. We began to spend time not just looking at the faces of people we knew, and only people we knew, we began to look at the images of faces we would never meet. You might be able to look at if you were English say, you might be able to look at a photograph of Queen Victoria.

You would never meet queen Victoria, but now here she was a face coming into your life. And that’s the only the beginning. Think now of how many hours a day you and I and most people are looking at faces on screen and how much that is changing the way we use our own face. We suddenly realize, I say, suddenly, but we realized through the late nineteenth century and into the age of movie and TV, the people are looking at us. They have to.

What else have they got? Therefore, it’s almost incumbent on me and you. To do something with our face. You have a look of respectful concentration on your face at the moment. And I’m pleased by that.

But you know you’ve got that look. You can say, I’m looking naturally and you are looking naturally, but you’re in charge of it and responsible for it too. And you can manipulate it. And you would know, even if I was pouring you to death, you would know how to look as if you were concentrated. And that is true of all of us too, but it’s been enormously intensified by the experience of looking at faces on screens.

This is this is all making me very self conscious. It’s calling to mind the the Steven Soderberg movie Schitzopoulos, where Stephen Soderberg plays. He plays the main character and there’s there are just scenes where he will sit there and, like, move his face around in random ways. As if he is yeah. And that is how I feel right now.

I feel like just going back. You know, we’ll see. But I I’m gonna I’ll try and hold it together here.

Alright.

One thing one thing I wanted to I wanted to kind of dive into is, you know, look, they’re there there have been several big revolutions in acting on screen. I mean, the first obviously is the the move from silence to sound. That’s that’s a huge one obviously. But then in the in the fifties and sixties and seventies, you have the the the rise of method. Right?

The this this idea of authenticity as the the most important thing. You know, why why is it that that frankly actors as well as writers and audiences and critics and everybody else started to put so much emphasis on authenticity as the the grand idea of acting? Well, I think it’s partly

because in the years after the Second World War. As a culture, we began to realize that the great movies we’d all love and enjoyed so much. They were pretty deceivable. They presented a picture of life that really didn’t have a lot in common with the reality we had to live. The pursuit of happiness was almost like an advertisement imposed upon.

The nature of real awkward and tidy life. And I think people rebelled against I think people felt there was a need for a new sort of reality and a respect for realism. And the actor studio, which was formed in nineteen forty seven was a very deliberate concerted attempt. In America. And based upon the idea of an American style of acting, although it had a big influence from Russia originally, but that way of acting would be truthful with a capital t in a way that films have not been before.

And so You’ve got a great age of acting, Montgomery Cliff, Dean, Brando, Steiger, so on and so forth. Largely men. And we love audiences love them and and it was very easy to accept this due reality. You take a film mic on the waterfront. There is a great scene where Brando’s character is sort of trying to ingotiate himself with the evamory same character, and he takes her blups if you remember the scene, and he sort of plays with them on his own hand.

Well, trust me when that film opened nineteen fifty four, I felt and millions felt, oh, my God. What a what a glimpse of immediacy and intimacy. What an incredible thing the character is doing. You look at that scene now and you say, what a superb piece of work, the actor. Is doing.

So that, you know, all of these new realism, they get data, and they and they become a little more study in pretending than just in being real. But everything we call the method, the actor’s studio, was a major force in American life and in international life too. And we’re still with that kind of act we have actors like Daenero, Pacino still, who were active studio people. Mhmm. So it had a profound effect.

Mhmm. You can trace it in politics too. If you look at Dwight Eisenhower on film, you say how did a man as dull and plain and is e mapped with the camera as he is, come to be president. The answer is because people trusted him before they even saw him on camera because of what he’d done in the war. From Kennedy onwards, you have presidents who you cannot really begin to describe and think of without thinking about them in terms of performance on camera.

And you couldn’t have a presidential candidate now. The party simply would not tolerate it. The public would not tolerate it. You couldn’t have someone like that who is not brilliant on camera. And, you know, whatever you think about Donald Trump, he is brilliant on camera.

Yes. I mean, I mean, this is the story of the twenty sixteen election. How much free meeting he got just by — Absolutely. — being on TV.

I’ve remembered that way in the debate with Clinton. He sort of appeared behind her, who may know. That was he was he was directing that event. Yeah. Well,

I mean, it’s it it it is a movie villain sort of thing where you just, you know, the the shadow behind the three are you know, let me one one final question here. The in in your book, you write about basically the the fact of movie starter. Here’s here’s what you what you write. In its essence, it is implacably authoritarian and hierarchical. The medium praise stars.

It may not exist without them. And this is, I think, one of the most interesting key movie business ideas of our age, right, is that the star we’re almost in a post star age. Right? We we we are moving beyond the Julia Roberts and the Kerry Grant. Now it’s Batman and Superman and, you know, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, right, to to give one giant example.

Can do you think do you think there is a future in movies without the the the grand presence of actor stars as opposed to IP stars.

Well, I I’m I’m gloomy about this. I I think theatrical movies such as I grew up loving and you too, I’m sure. I think it’s fading away. And and I’m not entirely sure what will come in this place. But I think you’re gonna get to get a lot more of what I will call ordinary people in the image.

And even artificial people. You know, the computer is capable now of making a new humphrey Bogart film. You take all the Bogart imagery. You put it in a computer. You program it to be a new character.

And they can do that. And the potential for that in politics, for instance, is amazing. And I think it’s an issue we’re gonna have to face. And it’s pretty frightening to you. No.

No. I don’t think we’re gonna have moving stars in the way we used to.

Yeah. I mean, I I do wonder I you mentioned Bogart or other, you know, kind of CGI generated stars. And I do wonder if we we will just end up seeing an almost stasis where we just have endlessly recycling, you know, a new Marilyn Monro movie, a new Harrison Ford movie after, you know

— Right.

— after he passes on. I mean, pretty easily happen. He

usually turn off the way. Yes.

Well, I always like to end the show by asking if there’s anything I should have asked. If you think there’s anything folks should know about your book, about the world of acting, anything in the world of

how my face looks right now. I don’t Yeah. We’ve had a good conversation, I think. So, no, I I don’t have any any complaints at all, but I’ll ask you. Let’s see how whether we agree.

Who’s gonna win the Oscar for best actor? Oh.

Oh. Boy,

Well,

I’ll tell you who I want I want to win. I want Colin Farrell to win for Banchy’s in which I — Before we — I loved.

I absolutely agree.

Just a mournful a mournful face for a a perfect. But I don’t know who do you think will who do you think will win?

I think Colin Faroe will win. Okay? I think I think probably Kate Blanchett will win as actress, but I would vote for Andrea Reisbrough.

Well, I there is much controversy about this at the moment as we as we know. I I I, you know, I still have not seen too, Leslie. I’m still trying to get it into the into the rotation. It’s the only one of the nominated performances. I have not watched yet.

It’s film,

but it’s an amazing performance. Well,

she’s wonderful. I mean, our nation. Yep. She is she’s

you

know, we mentioned we mentioned actors who bring their look to the to the screen, but she is one who is different in every every movie, every performance.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you’ll like it when you see.

Okay. I got I’m I’m gonna it’s on my it’s on my two watch. It was so funny I can get to it this this weekend. Well, thank you. So thank you again mister Thompson.

The the name of the book is acting naturally the Magic and Great Performances. David Thompson. Go check it out Amazon, Barnes and Noble again, anywhere books are sold. It’s it’s you’ll you’ll have a you’ll have a blast reading it. And hopefully learn something.

My name is Sunny Bunch. I’m the culture editor at the Bulwark, and I’ll be back next week with another episode. We’ll see you guys

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